Spinsters
by Richard Katz
Summary: Remus and Sirius are spinsters.


Sirius and Remus sat quietly in the drawing room, working at their knitting. Really there was no knitting, but that was what Sirius had taken to calling it when they were acting like a pair of old maids like this. Outside the damp spring rain pressed against the house so forcefully that they'd lit the fire hours earlier. Remus slid his chair a few feet closer to it now, giving a half-glance at Sirius, but his friend was staring vacantly over the top of the newspaper and no spinster joke was forthcoming from him. Remus held his hands out in front of him, leaning forward so that the rocking chair he sat on tilted toward the fire, but it was no use; he felt cold right through his bones. Remus made to stand. "I'm going to-" he began, but the newspaper crackled violently as Sirius lurched into the present. "Don't leave!" he said sharply, and Remus sank back down onto the rocker in silence. There was nothing that he could say but, perhaps in an attempt to demonstrate control over his voice, Sirius asked him what time the Order was meeting tomorrow.

The conversation starter may have been feeble on Sirius's part, but Remus was a spinster and he knew how to make the best of things and so he began a litany on all the Order members' time constraints, those silly people with their jobs and their children and their nonsense. That was when Tonks burst in, while Remus was leaning forward on a rocking chair as he clutched his arms in an attempt to warm feeling into them, while he was halfway through a sentence about accommodating Arthur's new work schedule into the window of time between McGonagall's guest lecture on switching spells and the prime time for Mundungus to sell poisoned licorice before its market value went down.

Suddenly the room felt a whole lot warmer and Remus couldn't believe he was sitting in a rocker and well look at the blanket on his knees, how did that happen-Tonks billowed onto the couch, her Ministry robes swirling around her, and launched directly into a story that was so funny that she couldn't stop laughing long enough to properly speak and breathe. She waved her arms at the stringy sofa as though to apologize for her lack of composure and then trundled from the room. Remus and Sirius jumped to their feet like spinster clones and hurried after her and didn't return until it was hours later and Tonks had gone home.

"We're doing the bloody jigsaw puzzle," Sirius told Remus, and so they pooled all the pieces on the scruffy rug in front of the hearth and worked their way through it all, drawing closer and closer to the fire as the night deepened outside. Flat grey light finally came in through the crack in the drapes to spread it's dim light on the completed puzzle. Remus could tell without listening that it was still raining outside. "Ten thousand pieces, bloody hell," Remus says feebly.

"You should ask her out on a date," Sirius barked.

"I wouldn't even begin to know where to-" Remus started.

"Then you should take her home-her house, not this place-and you should fuck her," SIrius said.

"I couldn't-" Remus began.

"Fuck her up against her living room wall, or maybe on her kitchen table." He looked at Remus and Remus could feel all his Sirius she's your _cousin_ and a werewolf could _never _dissipate off his tongue and into the damp, foul air of the drawing room. Remus realized that he was so close to the fire that the soles of his shoes had grown soft.

"Fuck her in the shower," he muttered. Sirius grinned maniacally. "With hot water running down her thighs. And dripping off the ends of her hair." Remus looked down at the jigsaw puzzle. "We can do better than this," he continued. "We still have fourteen hours until the Order meeting tonight." Sirius uncrinkled himself from the floor and, with a sweep of his wand, set the puzzle on fire. Remus waited, in case Sirius tried to make fun of him for worrying about burning the rug.. and was glad when Sirius did.

"Fuck the rug," Remus said to Sirius. Sirius leaned forward over the burning puzzle for a moment, then abruptly stood straight up. "I have firewhisky under Buckbeak's bed. Follow me."


End file.
